A Block Reuse Strategy That Cuts Material Prep Time in Half

Write down where the hours go in preparing a single class period and you often find more of them spent on 'the chores of making materials' than on 'designing the teaching.' You build the worksheet in a word processor, organize the video links somewhere else, rebuild the quiz in a survey tool, and write the discussion prompt in yet another document. The biggest waste is that when you teach the same unit to next year's class, you run through this whole process again almost from the start. Because none of it is organized in one place, just finding last year's version eats a good while.

Making it reusable is the whole point

The secret to cutting material prep time is not in making things quickly but in breaking what you made once into pieces you can use again.

• Divide material into small pieces at the level of an activity, rather than into 'one document.'
• Keep the pieces you use often, such as explanations, quizzes, discussion prompts, and submission forms, in one place.
• Next time, instead of building anything new, take the pieces out and assemble them in a different order.

The fastest way to make material is not typing quickly. It is pulling out what you made last year in five minutes.

How Flipsson's blocks and library handle it

Flipsson, Nallijaku's modular lesson platform, takes this business of breaking things up and reusing them as the tool's basic way of working. You use it right in the browser with nothing to install, and you finish material in one flow without traveling between tools.

Material gets made in the block editor. Drag on about ten kinds of blocks, among them heading, body text, callout, code, image and YouTube, short-answer and open-response assignments, and file submission, and finish a worksheet on one screen. Drop the video straight in with a YouTube block, put the check questions in a short-answer assignment block, and gather opinions with an open-response block, and explanation, video, quiz, and discussion flow without a break inside one piece of material. Each assignment block lets you set the character count, whether a response is required, and the allowed file types with a click, so there is no separate survey tool to open.

The real time saving comes from the library. Save a finished module to the library and next term, in the same unit, you can pull the whole thing back in and change only the dates and the examples. Here is the order worth trying.

1. Build one unit you teach often carefully out of blocks, once, and save it to the library.
2. Also save the pieces you use often as small modules in their own right, things like an 'opening callout,' a 'five-question check quiz,' and an 'open-response assignment form.'
3. For the next period, instead of building anything new, take the pieces out of the library and assemble the order.

Add the real-time submission cards of the live lesson and handing out the worksheet and collecting the work both finish on one screen. Gone is the business of collecting paper and lining it up for grading, and who turned it in and who did not is right there on the cards.

Key takeaways

Material prep time drops in earnest when you save a module you built once to the library and reuse it. Build your material as one flow out of blocks and store the pieces you use often, and next term all that is left is assembly. It is free for up to ten classes with no card to register, so start with a small experiment: build one unit out of blocks and put it in the library.